'Lion King' Roars at the July Box Office
The Walt Disney Studios
It was no surprise that the mouse house’s latest feature film, The Lion King, was going to smash the July box office. The live-action remake of the acclaimed 1994 animated film grossed $192 million its first weekend making it the eighth biggest opening ever.
Despite a -60% decline in ticket sales, Lion King continued to dominate the box office its sophomore weekend after making $76.6 million. While ticket sales are expected to plummet in the weeks to come, the star-studded film has already pulled in $350 million at the domestic box office and totaled $750 million worldwide.
Jon Favreau’s Lion King rendition is very similar to Disney’s other live-action reboot released a couple of weeks ago, Aladdin. Both are remakes of Disney animated films, feature Hollywood A-Listers, smashed box office records and received very little critical appraisal.
Earlier this summer Dark Phoenix received a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest of the entire X-Men franchise, and grossed $65 million at the domestic box office—an incredibly underwhelming total for an estimated $200 million budget. Yet a similar critic-audience dynamic was not apparent with The Lion King and Aladdin which both received mid-50 percentile scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic but still happen to be two of 2019’s biggest films. Does this mean Disney is immune to criticism and modern audiences are struggling to make their own unbiased opinions of films, or a little bit of both?
With Disney’s live-action reboots, audiences are promised a near mirror copy of the original content they fell in love with when they were younger—but just a little “realer”—meaning they can’t hate it. But they can hate and not pay for a screening of Dark Phoenix, which is loosely based on an infamous X-Men arc featured in Marvel comics and is the direct successor of X-Men: Apocalypse - which was also widely panned when it was released back in 2016. In the case of Dark Phoenix, there was undeniably a case of audiences relying on critic’s opinions as opposed to their own.
Meaning Disney isn’t as immune to criticism as it is great at exploiting wide nostalgia for its extensive catalog of 20th-century gems. Apart from the Marvel Cinematic Installments and Pixar films, Disney’s projects have predominantly been made up of live-action reboots of their past animated features. And although this model has proven to be commercially successful, apart from Dumbo and the Alice and Wonderland films, it does prompt the question of what the mouse house plans to do when they’ve redone all their finite number of films.
Universal
Box Office Roundup: Since opening on June 7th, Joe Talbot’s feature-length debut The Last Black Man in San Francisco has grossed $4,105,306 as of June 28th. The A24 project’s theatrical run nears a close after nearly 2 months since releasing.
Shaft has had an underwhelming theatrical run thus far despite housing well-known stars such as Samuel L. Jackson, Regina Hall, Alexandra Shipp and Method Man. The quiet June release has failed to earn back its budget, estimated at around $30 million, after grossing only $21,229,873 in seven weekends. Similar to many other indies, Samuel L,. Jackson’s latest film struggled to compete with this summer’s many franchise titles.
Aladdin’s low 56% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer hasn’t stopped film-goers from seeing the mouse house’s latest live-action reboot. The Disney titled has crossed $340 million domestically and has made a little over $1 billion at the global box office.
Yesterday, starring Himesh Patel, is one of this summer’s smallest films but has been quite successful at the box office. In its fifth weekend it has grossed $63,421,225. Since its release on June 28th, the Universal title has nearly quadrupled its $26 million budget earning $101 million worldwide.
In its third weekend since release the buddy comedy Stuber, a film about an Uber driver (Kumail Nanjiani) who is thrust into an investigation with a cop (Dave Bautista), has grossed $20 million nationwide and a modest $5 million overseas totaling about $25 million worldwide.
Lulu Wang’s feature-length directorial debut The Farewell broke box office records 2 weeks ago with the highest per-theater average ever. Although Wang’s film has made a modest $3,823,840, its box office returns are expected to grow as it nears a nationwide release on August 2nd.